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KZN researcher to host 'Cinderella' HIV/AIDS research
Wendy Jasson da Costa 19 February 2007. Independent Online. Republished courtesy of Independent Newspapers (Pty) Ltd.
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One of South Africa's top medical researchers, Dr Quarraisha Abdool Karim, has described microbicides as the "Cinderellas" of products being developed in the fight against HIV/AIDS.
Abdool Karim, who is based at the Centre for the AIDS Programme of Research in South Africa at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, is about to launch a new microbicide clinical trial in the province.
She said that, up to now, work in the field had mainly been limited to small biotechnology companies and academic departments. This was part of the "politics of HIV/AIDS", because if microbicides were mainly for men, they would have been given greater priority and scaled up, she said.
The microbicide to be used in the trial, Tenofovir, is already used orally as an HIV/AIDS drug, but it is to be tested as a vaginal gel which has to be applied before and after sex, even when a condom could not be used. "Women's ability to get partners to use condoms regularly and properly is limited," said Abdool Karim.
She stressed microbicides were not an alternative to condoms, but had to be used in conjunction with them and other safe sex practices.
She said any unlicensed drug had to be registered with the Medicines Control Council and an ethics committee before the start of a clinical trial, and she had already received approval from both for her work.
Her participants in the trial would all be "high-risk cohorts", because they came from communities which had a high prevalence of the disease, might have multiple sexual partners, or have had another sexually transmitted disease.
Abdool Karim said, as with other clinical trials, some of the participants would be given an active substance, while others would be issued with a placebo which was packaged the same and smelled and looked identical to the Tenofovir gel.
She said none of them, apart from the independent Data Safety and Monitoring Committee, knew which women were on the placebo or active substance. "If we knew, it would create some kind of bias by the study team," she said. |
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